Politics

In my operational risk seminar this spring, students ranked and then restacked and ranked the top operational risks present in our world. No one was especially pleased with the results, and the top three risks – cyber-threats, global uncertainty, and terrorism – seemed nearly interchangeable, depending upon the month. As we came to the end of the quarter – particularly with the terrorism acts in Manchester, London, and Tehran -- “global uncertainty” seemed to encapsulate the other two risks, particularly when the elections in France and Great Britain are taken into account along with the performance of the U.S. president on his first diplomatic trip abroad.

Latest Posts in Politics

This email arrived from Hillary Clinton the other day, a note from her promoting Onward Together, personally addressed to me. Why me? Because I’m on the Hillary e-mail distribution list, as a supporter, a Hillary voter.

America has a long history of scattering ashes and burying bodies in hallowed soil everywhere, and even beyond our own land. The Normandy American Cemetery is where thousands of white Christian crosses, Jewish stars of david, and Islamic five-pointed stars mark the graves of our soldiers who died on French soil during World War II.Many other cemeteries scattered around our own nation are full of weather beaten headstones, stained by tall grass and choked with weeds. The grave markers are like pearls that have long ago lost their luster and, yet, are as pure as the tears shed by those who once loved these fallen soldiers.

Not far from where I live in a swarm of suburban housing, there is a federal prison. Usually my exposure to this compound is limited; I often take, out of conscience or convenience, Wadsworth Blvd instead, a road not inhabited by the hulking reminder of our broken penal system.

But not long ago I was driving with my 9-year-old nephew to an odd part of town, not North West towards Denver like I usually gravitate ---ebb and flow,...

So, the labels “Liberal,” “Conservative,” and “Reactionary” are regularly bandied about and employed like edged weapons. There seems to be no stronger epithet these days, one of these labels in the hands of an adversary. But, let’s spend a moment examining each of them.

A Liberal, according to Webster, is someone open to new behaviors or opinions and willing to discard traditional values.

Civil disobedience has been practiced by peaceful protesters long before Henry Thoreau penned the essay with this name after a night in jail for refusing to pay the poll tax. In the US, when protester arrests are mentioned, Rosa Parks’ and Dr. Martin Luther King’s bus protest comes to mind together with an understanding of its roots in the Indian independence movement, led by Mahatma Gandhi. In the last decade, there has been a spike in...